Boor­ish be­hav­iour

At a re­cent po­lit­i­cal can­di­dates meet­ing, I was dis­ap­pointed at the boor­ish be­hav­iour of David Bennett (Na­tional) who be­came in­creas­ingly ob­jec­tion­able as the meet­ing pro­gressed. Toward the end when can­di­dates were lim­ited to 30-sec­ond an­swers to ques­tions from the floor, all other can­di­dates were self­dis­ci­plined and com­plied with the rules. Mr Bennett spoke out when it was oth­ers’ turn to speak and grossly ex­ceeded the al­lo­cated time. Prior to this he bom­bas­ti­cally told us what hor­rors awaited us if we elected a Labour-led gov­ern­ment. Whether this was from polldriven panic, or be­cause he could not ex­plain Na­tional’s dere­lic­tion in so many di­rec­tions, mat­ters not. We adults wanted to garner facts and I, for one, have enough now to con­firm that Na­tional see democ­racy as a threat to their on­go­ing lust for power. I have con­sis­tently voted Na­tional since 1966, but I will not do so this time around, be­cause of the fol­low­ing: They ig­nore feed­back from elec­torates, their hubris is phe­nom­e­nal, their lais­sez-faire poli­cies have al­lowed trade train­ing, hous­ing, health, ed­u­ca­tion, en­vi­ron­ment, and de­fence to get so far be­hind that it will cast any gov­ern­ment elected in a dif­fi­cult po­si­tion.